Abstract Quantum optical materials are fundamental infrastructure to realize emerging quantum technologies for quantum communication, quantum computation, quantum memory, and sensing. Among the wide range of solid‐state platforms explored, lanthanide‐based systems stand out for their ability to combine atomic‐like coherence with the scalability of condensed matter. The shielded 4f orbitals of lanthanide ions yield long‐lived radiative transitions, narrow homogeneous linewidths, and rich hyperfine structures that support optical and spin coherence extending from milliseconds to hours. These intrinsic properties, combined with the versatility of host environments—from bulk crystals and thin films to fibers and nanocrystals—enable lanthanides to address three pillars of quantum optics: collective emission, single‐ion emission, and ensemble‐based quantum memories. Recent experiments have demonstrated room‐temperature superfluorescence in nanocrystals, single‐ion emission in the telecom band, and quantum memories with record‐setting storage times and efficiencies. Here, a critical review of these advances, emphasizing how control parameters such as host lattice, isotopic purification, dopant concentration, and photonic integration govern performance metrics of lanthanide‐based quantum optical materials, is provided. By analyzing the state‐of‐the‐art of lanthanides for quantum optics and envisioning the potential future directions, the principles to design lanthanide‐based materials as indispensable building blocks for scalable, application‐driven quantum technologies are aimed to highlight.
Abstract Quantum optical materials are fundamental infrastructure to realize emerging quantum technologies for quantum communication, quantum computation, quantum memory, and sensing. Among the wide range of solid‐state platforms explored, lanthanide‐based systems stand out for their ability to combine atomic‐like coherence with the scalability of condensed matter. The shielded 4f orbitals of lanthanide ions yield long‐lived radiative transitions, narrow homogeneous linewidths, and rich hyperfine structures that support optical and spin coherence extending from milliseconds to hours. These intrinsic properties, combined with the versatility of host environments—from bulk crystals and thin films to fibers and nanocrystals—enable lanthanides to address three pillars of quantum optics: collective emission, single‐ion emission, and ensemble‐based quantum memories. Recent experiments have demonstrated room‐temperature superfluorescence in nanocrystals, single‐ion emission in the telecom band, and quantum memories with record‐setting storage times and efficiencies. Here, a critical review of these advances, emphasizing how control parameters such as host lattice, isotopic purification, dopant concentration, and photonic integration govern performance metrics of lanthanide‐based quantum optical materials, is provided. By analyzing the state‐of‐the‐art of lanthanides for quantum optics and envisioning the potential future directions, the principles to design lanthanide‐based materials as indispensable building blocks for scalable, application‐driven quantum technologies are aimed to highlight.
Abstract Rare earth doped crystals show, at low temperatures, extremely narrow optical homogeneous linewidths, as well as long spin coherence lifetimes, a unique combination in the solid state. This makes these materials attractive for optical quantum technologies like quantum communication and processing. Most of the results in this field have so far used bulk crystals because of their exceptional spectroscopic properties. Crystalline thin films can combine these properties with the possibilities offered by integration in photonic circuits in terms of compactness, stability, energy efficiency, and scalability. In this review, recent results on different platforms containing rare earth ions and targeting quantum technologies, including lithium niobate and silicon films, and oxide films deposited on Si, are summarized. Current approaches for obtaining thin films and devices are described, together with RE spectroscopic properties and applications to quantum technologies. The opportunities and challenges offered or faced by the different platforms are also discussed.
Coherent quantum devices play a central role in quantum science and engineering. Rare-earth ions such as erbium in solids feature numerous 4f- intra-shell transitions that are effectively shielded from their crystalline surroundings by closed outer shells, allowing for long spin coherence times and narrow optical transitions. Recent ensemble experiments have established the rare-earth doped crystals as the leading materials for optical quantum memories. However, the development of large-scale quantum devices based on rare-earth doped materials has remained a challenge. Here we describe a scalable quantum photonic platform based on epitaxially grown oxide thin films doped with trivalent ions on silicon substrates. The platform builds upon the recent developments of high quality epitaxial rare-earth doped oxides on silicon, and highlights the integration of quantum coherent materials with existing silicon technologies for ultimate device scalability. The proposed device platform builds upon our capability to epitaxially grow high quality, near-lattice-matched Y2O3 thin films on silicon. The epitaxial thin film is of high structural quality and offers several distinct advantages: (1) significantly less optical loss and better quantum emitter coherence; (2) atomic precision placement of rare-earth emitters (via delta doping) with respect to the photonic mode for controllable ion-photon coupling; (3) scalable top-down device fabrication using standard lithography and etching techniques; (4) heterogeneous integration with silicon takes full advantage of existing silicon photonics technologies for routing, tuning, and modulation of the quantum emission from rare-earth ions.
Since quantum information technologies are expected to offer communication security and high computational capacities, research in the field is currently attracting a lot of attention. Among the materials studied so far, rare earth doped inorganic insulators are one of the most promising. With the different available trivalent rare earth ions, the visible and the IR range including the telecom wavelength at 1.5 μm can be covered. Transitions are usually narrow, and at low temperatures, long optical and spin coherence times can often be observed. Investigations using bulk single crystals have already led to many promising results. Recently, spectroscopic studies have been extended to other forms of inorganic materials, such as transparent ceramics, thin films, and nanoparticles for single rare‐earth qubits. Progress in these areas is expected to offer many new possibilities for the design of quantum light‐matter interfaces and scalable quantum memories and processors.
Abstract Quantum memory is a core enabling device for large-scale quantum networks, serving as the fundamental building block for quantum repeaters and transportable quantum memories. Among various physical platforms, rare-earth-ion-doped crystals stand out as one of the most promising solid-state candidates for long-lived photonic quantum memories, owing to their exceptionally long spin coherence time and their compatibility with integration. In this review, we first introduce the physical mechanisms underlying long-lived spin coherence in rare-earth systems, with particular emphasis on the zero-first-order-Zeeman transition and dynamical decoupling techniques. We then review the experimental progress in this field, highlighting three distinct lifetimes—the spin coherence time, the light storage time, and the quantum storage time—and covering experiments that have achieved hour-scale spin coherence, minute- to hour-scale light storage, and minute-scale single-photon-level quantum storage. Finally, we discuss the remaining challenges that hinder the realization of practical long-lived quantum memories, explore potential strategies to overcome these obstacles, and outline the prospects for their future applications in quantum networks.
Abstract Rare‐earth dopants are arguably one of the most studied optical centers in solids, with applications spanning from laser optoelectronics, biosensing, lighting to displays. Nevertheless, harnessing rare‐earth dopants’ extraordinary coherence properties for quantum information technologies is a relatively new endeavor, and has been rapidly advancing in recent years. Leveraging the state‐of‐the‐art photonic technologies, on‐chip rare‐earth quantum devices functioning as quantum memories, single photon sources and transducers have emerged, often with potential performances unrivaled by other solid‐state quantum technologies. These existing quantum devices, however, nearly exclusively rely on macroscopic bulk materials as substrates, which may limit future scalability and functionalities of such quantum systems. Thus, the development of new platforms beyond single crystal bulk materials has become an interesting approach. In this review article, we summarize the latest progress towards nanoscale, low‐dimensional rare‐earth doped materials for enabling next generation rare‐earth quantum devices. Different platforms with a variety of synthesis methods are surveyed. Their key metrics measured to date are presented and compared. Special attention is placed on the connection between the topology of each platform to its target device applications. Lastly, an outlook for near term prospects of these platforms are given, with a hope to spur broader interests in rare‐earth doped materials as a promising candidate for quantum information technologies.
Efforts to harness quantum hardware relying on quantum mechanical principles have been steadily progressing. The search for novel material platforms that could spur the progress by providing new functionalities for solving the outstanding technological problems is however still active. Any physical property presenting two distinct energy states that can be found in a long-lived superposition state can serve as a quantum bit (qubit), the basic information processing unit in quantum technologies. Molecular systems that can feature electron and/or nuclear spin states together with optical transitions are one of the material platforms that can serve as optically addressable qubits. The attractiveness of molecular systems for quantum technologies relies on the fact that molecular structures of atomically defined nature can be obtained in endless diversity of chemical compositions. Crucially, by harnessing the molecular design protocols, the optical and spin (electronic and nuclear) properties of molecules can be tailored, aiding the design of optically addressable spin qubits and quantum sensors. In this contribution, we present a concise and collective discussion of optically addressable spin-bearing molecules - namely, organic molecules, transition metal (TM) and rare-earth ion (REI) complexes - and highlight recent results such as chemical tuning of optical and electron spin quantum coherence, optical spin initialization and readout, intramolecular quantum teleportation, optical coherent storage, and photonic-enhanced optical addressing. We envision that optically addressable spin-carrying molecules could become a scalable building block of quantum hardware for applications in the fields of quantum sensing, quantum communication and quantum computing.